History Repeats Itself

Has to. Nobody listens.

-- Steve Turner

I've already heard this clique somewhere before. Pfffft.

[I object to RhymeMe cos Steve's called a "real poet" in the UK. Would you say that of ee cummings, you dastardly PoetryPolice?]

[ee cannot have a WikiName And Turner's prose we simply can't abide For ShortPoems without rhymes are really lame And cummings coulda rhymed it if he'd tried]

Ugh. That scans like a train wreck. How about

EeCummings? is but a poor WikiName And Turner we just can't abide. For poems sans rhyme, we haven't the time, ee could have rhymed if he'd tried.

The rhyming structure is a little different (ABCCB), but it scans better to my ears.

How bout:

 History Unheeded
 Is oft Reheated

If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern which shines only on the waves behind us.

-- SamuelColeridge?

Or:

 History Impedes
 Man Exceeds

   Experience escorts us last
   Its pungent company
   Will not allow an axiom
   An opportunity.
   -- EmilyDickinson

   History repeats itself.
   Historians repeat each other.
   -- Philip Guedalla

[According to http://www.bartleby.com/66/27/26427.html]

Has to. Nobody listens. -- Steve Turner

If people did listen, wouldn't loads of intellectual cruft build up after just one generation, let alone hundreds? That is, for every time someone gives us wise advice, aren't there ten pieces of foolish advice nearby? Questioning established knowledge has value, even though it has the unfortunate side effect of making history repeat itself.

That has a wonderful sound to it, but may end up just being some sort of tautology. Would it not be more accurate to say that people ignore all the lessons of history without even trying to determine what comprises wisdom and what dross?

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, so to speak, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." -- KarlMarx, opening sentences of 'The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon' (see eg http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1852-18brum/18-1.txt)

The one thing we learn from history is that no one learns from history.

  --  Unknown

Santayana's (historian George Santayana) Maxim: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

The Schrader (cynic and useless bystander MartySchrader) Corollary to Santayana's Maxim: "Those who remember the past are doomed to stand by and watch it be repeated in real time."

HistoryRepeatsItself, but that doesn't mean that it has to. Mankind can make progress in avoiding repetitions by extending memory backward to include several generations and make his forward horizon and expectations extend several generations into the future. This means, not only human generations, but also to those of its tools and technologies. -- DonaldNoyes.200904162202.m06

CategoryAxiom?